Maybe he wants to make up for being away from home so often. Maybe he wants to understand what is in this kid's mind. Or maybe he just wants to prevent him from turning gay. Whichever reason he may have, one day Dad decides that he and Son should go out of the house and do something together! It will be fun, Dad says. And they will get to know each other better, won't that be great, old chap?

The problem is, Son is right now in an age where he isn't exactly very keen on doing uncool activities with uncool adults (or worse, being seen doing so). And Dad is of course the uncoolest adult there is! Since Son does not really have a say in the matter, he accompanies Dad of course. But don't expect him to just enjoy the day! He will instead react in one of these two ways:

Passive-aggressiveness. Perhaps he won't outright revolt, but instead of being in a good mood, he is constantly snarking, and acts generally rather uncooperative.

He will just find this incredibly dull and boring.

Popular bonding activities are:

Playing baseball in the garden. May often not include the Son-Doesn't-Like-It bit. For some reason, American media tend to depict this as iconic stock image of Dad and Son genuinely having a splendid time together. Might have something to do with baseball being more popular in the US than in many other parts of the world. For that matter, Dad and Son throwing a(n American) football to and fro might convey the same associations.

Fishing. This specific activity involving most of the time not much, well, activity, Son will most likely show reaction #2: "This is so booooooring."

Examples

A daydream of J.D. from Scrubs involves him playing baseball with his "father figure" Dr. Cox.

The Simpsons: When Homer finds out that Abe may not really be his biological father, he imagines himself playing baseball with the mystery guy who actually sired him. (He even has a question mark instead of a face!)

It's not playing baseball, but in Ragtime, when things are really starting to fall apart for the family, Father (who has been mostly neglectful) decides to take the Little Boy to see a baseball game whether he wants to go or not. In the end, Father is the one who has a miserable time (the game has more swearing, spitting, and immigrants than he remembered), while the Little Boy finds it all quite interesting.

Ray attempts this with his son in the 2004 War of the Worlds. Thanks to divorce induced estrangement and raging teenage contempt, it goes disastrously when barbed comments from his son incite Ray to put a lot of heat on his throws and hurt his son's hand, who then "accidentally" busted a window of Rays house.

In the Pilot of No Ordinary Family Jim tries to get the other members of the family interested in family bonding, including throwing the football around. Nobody cares to do so. The trip that they take where they have a plane crash and get their powers was another family bonding attempt.

In The Big Bang Theory, everyone is shocked that Sheldon is an expert on football, due to his father's insistence on teaching him against his will.

In a later episode, this actually enables Sheldon to bond with Mike, Bernadette's father. This is upsetting Howard, because being Mike's son-in-law, he is the one who was supposed to bond with him.

In Silver Linings Playbook Pat Sr. tries to make watching the Eagles his bonding activity with his son, who has open contempt for his father's superstitions. They make it work eventually.

Fishing

Bart going fishing with Flanders (not really Bart's father, but in this specific instance clearly acts as father figure) in The Simpsons Movie. But, here this is very much appreciated by the boy. Earlier in the movie Homer did take Bart fishing, just with a bug zapper.

In this page of a Star Trek TASFan Fiction comic, George Kirk goes fishing with his son James Tiberius. But Kirk Junior considers it far more interesting to analyze the fish with his tricorder.

The Dexter's Laboratory episode "Catch of the Day" is about Dexter's father taking him fishing, though the focus of the episode seems to be about getting to the pond before dawn.

In The Order of the Stick, Roy goes fishing with his grandfather in the afterlife. Since Roy is an adult, it goes better than most of them.

A textbook example appeared in Zits: Jeremy was already not excited about waking up at the crack of dawn to go on a boring fishing trip with his dad Walt, but then Walt decides to use the alone time to talk to Jeremy about sex, making the awkward meter shoot skyward.

Codename: Kids Next Door: Numbuh One / Nigel and his father go fishing and playing the tuba (sousaphone). Nigel reacts with passive aggressiveness. That bites him in the ass when later another kid kidnaps (fishes!) Nigelís dad to be his own and challenges Nigel to a tuba competition with Nigel's dad as the prize. It Makes Sense in Context.

At the end of an episode of How I Met Your Mother, we see Barney's dad taking Barney and his half-brother to a fishing-trip. Barney quickly proclaims that this is boring. However, it can be seen as an improvement of their father-son relationship that Barney has agreed to go with them in the first place. Before that, he either forced his father to join him during his own usual activities (which are partying and hitting on chicks), or completely ignored him. Also, it has to be pointed out that, contrary to most other examples here, Barney is already an adult. His father went away early in his childhood, and therefore they have a lot to make up for.

In Gravity Falls, Grunkle Stan drags Dipper and Mabel off on a fishing trip in a poorly-built dinghy for Bonding Day. Considering how last Bonding Day got the family arrested for counterfeiting ("The county jail was so cold..." Says Mabel), the twins are more than happy to escape for a monster hunt. They go back and fish in the end.

In Malcolm in the Middle, Hal guilt trips Malcolm into fishing during a family boat holiday with Stevie's family when he knows that Reece and Stevie are at a cheerleader camp. Malcolm later abandons his father on a rock in the middle of the lake to join his brother

One episode of NCIS starts with a father taking his son fishing. The son does not enjoy it—until his dad fishes up a dead body. Suddenly it's the most Bad Ass fishing trip ever.

Hunting

In The Simpsons episode "Homer's Phobia", Homer tries de-gaying Bart by taking him to a deer hunt. (Bart's reaction: "A bunch of guys alone together in the woods? Seems kinda gay.") After being attacked by reindeer, the hunting party gets rescued by the Camp and Gay (but not Camp Gay) man that Homer feared to have "contaminated" Bart in the first place.

In one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Worf takes a Klingon teenager, who lives in a remotely located colony (technically a Romulan prison, but not really prison-like, due to negligence by the Romulans) to a hunt, because Worf can't accept that he, and the other teenagers born there, know next to nothing about the Klingon Proud Warrior Culture. In contrast to the other examples, this actually works! The teenager even infects all the other Klingons with his post-hunt excitement. Cue a dozen Klingons breaking into a wild drinking song, and their Romulan comrades (their "guards") just sitting there and making uneasy facial expressions.

In Moral Orel, Orel and his dad go hunting. "Awkward" would be a bit of an understatement. His dad ends up shooting Orel accidentally.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories: It is never seen on screen, but you can hear a voice message of a disastrous father-son hunting trip. (Depending on your PI, it plays out differently.)

Other (Team) Sports

In the original UK version of ''Life on Mars' Sam Tyler plays soccer with his Dad- the twist being because he's travelled back in time his Dad doesn't know this!

In Quack Pack, Donald convinces his nephews to play ice hockey with him. They are bored by this, and just try to win the game really fast, in order to end this as soon as possible.

The Dexter's Laboratory episode "Sports a Poppin'" has Dexter's father try to teach Dexter a sport—any sport. Dexter winds up either misinterpreting the rules or fails miserably at it, and his father is forced to give up and retreat to the TV, thus missing Dexter using all the sports gears in an attempt to contain the monster that escaped the lab.

In an attempt to masculine his son, Ludovic's father in My Life In Pink enrolls him in a soccer team. Ludo fails miserably at it though.

In Aqua Teen Hunger Force Master Shake and his son Ezekiel play tennis and basketball, though for Shake this is less about bonding and more about finding out what his son is good at so that he can exploit him financially. Ultimately, he discovers that Zeke is both good at chess and not really his son.

Other

A Goofy Movie: Goofy drags his son Max to a cross-country trip like the ones he took with his dad (which he remembers very fondly, in a subversion of this trope). Along the way there's a stop at a dilapidated theme park and a short fishing lesson interrupted by Bigfoot. Oh, and they never actually finish the trip.

Rock is convinced by Willy in My Dad The Rockstar to bond with him more and they find out they have nothing in common.

An ad for Royal Caribbean Cruise Line is narrated by a mom, talking about her daughter not smiling. It seems to be Banned From Youtube, but here's a description.

Peter: Well, I guess things could be worse. Jason: Oh? Peter: At least Dad hasn't suggest we sit around the campfire naked and beat drums in some stupid "Iron John" male-bonding ceremony.

-Beat Panel- Jason: Say it louder, I don't think he heard you. Peter:Well, I guess things could be worse.-Cut to Roger peeking out of a tent holding a drum.- Roger: Who's up for some bonding?!note This line was eventually used as the title of the strip compilation this storyline appears in.

In The Simpsons, Homer has suddenly decided to spend time with his kids, to get back at his father (somehow). He tries to teach Bart how to ride a bike (even though Bart already knows), pushes Lisa on a tire swing (made with a broken, dirty tire), and showers Maggie with potato chips as he eats them with her strapped to his chest.

Bart: No offense, Homer, but your half-assed underparenting was a lot more fun than your half-assed overparenting. Homer: But I'm using my whole ass.

There was a commecial which featured a clearly nerdy dad who was sporting facial piercings, talking about bonding with his son at Burning Man. The son just sat there looking utterly mortified.

Inverted in Boiler Room. Seth attempts to have coffee with Marty, but it's Marty (the father) who quickly gets annoyed and leaves.

When Blaine correctly picks out a carburetor for Kurt's dad, Blaine explains that he and his own father rebuilt a classic Chevy together. He also explains that he thinks the activity was meant to "turn him straight."

There was also has a small Tearjerker moment when Kurt sees his dad and new stepbrother bonding over watching college sports. As Kurt is more a Camp Gay character, it breaks his heart that there are some "manly" activities that he has no interest in and which will never be a way for him to bond with his own father.

However, this trope is also inverted for the same characters in a season two episode, in which Kurt and his dad are seen sharing one of Kurt's favorite pastimes - cooking - as a bonding activity instead of the previously seen attempts at sports and working on cars. It doesn't work, but that's not because of the choice of activity.

Variation: the awkward father-daughter bonding between Veronica and her father in Better Off Ted. For years the two of them have interacted mostly through corporate espionage and trying to one-up each other, but when Veronica's father develops terminal cancer they make some awkward attempts at spending time together. They quickly decide that they preferred the corporate espionage.

Aquila is full of them, or at the very least attempted bonding activities like swimming (a lot of swimming is mentioned) but perhaps the oddest one is where a father sticks wheels on the titular space-craft.

Gender-inverted example from Hey Arnold!. Helga and her mother are going to meet up with relatives for Mother's Day weekend, and to do that, a road trip is necessary, and becomes this.

Another gender-inverted example in The Golden Girls, which is also unique in the sense that it's the daughter who wants to bond. Dorothy isn't sure how much time she has left with her elderly mother Sophia, takes her to Disney World. Sophia wants to go on the rides, but Dorothy, desperate to bond, forces her to stay in the hotel room and go through photos and letters and slides and diaries. This results in a massive blowup and then a reconciliation.

Hugh Neutron: Now it is time for father-son bonding. BOND WITH ME JIMMY.

Played for laughs in World's Greatest Dad, where the kid suggests to his dad they could build a rocket, only to add that the idea was retarded.

Inverted in Getting Even With Dad as it is Timmy (the son), who wants to improve his relationship with his reluctant father by doing fun activities together.

In a non-related example in Shatterheart, Fai attempts to bond with R!Syaoran after he ostracized and ignored the latter for months by having cooking lessons with him and going book-shopping. R!Syaoran hates it the entire time because it comes across as extremely forced and Fai overcompensates too much. It ends in tearswhen Syaoran getskidnapped in the bookstore.

Played around with in Noob. In the backstory, a father tried that with his teenage son after the death of his wife. Problem: the father is a "Well Done, Son!" Guy and the son has Inferiority Superiority Complex, so the father tries to do his best at the activities, which puts an invisible toll on the son's self-esteem. Poor Communication Kills kicked and the two ended up drifting away even further. The son eventually started playing the MMORPG in which the story is set, hoping it would be a place where his father wouldn't follow him, but turned out to be very wrong. Long story short, things deteriorated to the point that secretly going Archnemesis Dad online ended being the only way the father could interact with his son. In Noob: Le Conseil des Trois Factions, they got themselves to a family therapist who suggested that they try board games and had to be told that the usual activities don't work on them. He ended up prescribing them playing the MMORPG with brand new avatars.

TV Tropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy